The cool thing about Postcrossing Forums is that you get to choose the tags in which you participate. Do you want to send & receive cards made from food packages? There’s a tag for that! Cards from a postcard book? They’ve got that! Animals? Islands? Ugly cards? Yep, yup, and oh, yez! So when I tagged a Postcrosser in Tartu, Estonia, in the Snoopy/Peanuts tag, I knew my card would find a good home.

Or maybe not so much.

In her U2U (internal Postcrossing Forum email) to me to give me her mailing address, the person I tagged wrote, “I´m very thankful, if you will change your cards and send to me fauna postcards.”

WHAT?!?

I went to look at her profile, and asked “WHAT?!?,” again, as I read this line:

“Sry, but i don’t like drawn postcards and also i don’t like postcards with…cartoons…”

HUH?!? WHY ON EARTH would you enter a themed tag, if you don’t want cards that fit in with the theme?

Further, she wrote to me, “please, if possible, send a card / cards in an envelope.” Not only against the spirit of Postcrossing, but, as I say in my auto signature on the Forum, I send my cards as the snail mail gawdz intended: written & stamped.

¡Increíble!

Here’s the card I sent:

A backside? Yes, this card has one: and as you’ll see, I was able to give her some fauna.

After a somewhat long & stressful work day, that began with me waking up hours early thanks to a vivid (but actually quite useful) work dream, I was so happy to come home to this beautiful surprise envelope from my pen pal Cindi.

I love all three of those stamps. You know, I grew up on comics–ALL of them. I used to read every single comic strip in the newspapers. This lasted until Bill Watterson gave up producing Calvin & Hobbes, my favorite strip. That’s the day comics stopped being so fun. Now I still do receive a paper–but I don’t always pick up the comic section at all, yet alone read much of what’s in it. I suppose if more people got newspapers, read the comics, and got vocal about what they loved & why, the comics could–dare I say it–be great again.

Okay, enough of the aside, let’s get back to the treasure! I love this art atop Cindi’s letter.

Hey, it’s Young Sally Brown!

And here, the treasure amid the treasure! Suntan Snoopy enjoying some Hawaiian local food: Loco Moco! I love the sticker. I might have gasped when I pulled it out of the envelope, I don’t remember.

Now a sticker sheet! Awesome.

I would love a sheet of Pig-Pen stickers!

Now, a New Year postcard from Japan! I’ve said it before, & now I’ll say it again: why aren’t New Year greeting postcards a thing here in the U.S.?

Hey, a book mark! Two, actually! Which is good, since I never read just one book at a time.

So many details in this package, I need to try to include as many as possible. Let me show the backside of the letter paper:

And there were these somewhat small envelopes (not quite 4″ x 6″) that were printed for mailing. Dare I try it?

…and the matching letter sheets…

And, putting a stake in it–washi tape!

WOW.

What a great way to end a day! And it was all so overwhelming, I went right to sleep.

Let’s start with a great pair of cards I actually got to choose, thanks to Postcrossing Forum offer tags. This Peanuts postcard, with Patty scratching Snoopy’s chin, came from Japan, and the sender wrote, “I hope you will enjoy this card!” Well, yes… I did ask for it…

The sender in Hong Kong tells me about her local Disneyland:

“(It’s) the smallest one in the world, but it’s still popular, especially with Chinese tourists. Every day the park is crowded with tourists. 😦 and I am not interested in it.”

Ha, when I spent a mere 3 nights in HK a few years back (not nearly enough time to properly see the city), I tried like crazy to avoid Disneyland–but everywhere I turned, there was another image or large advertising display for the place. I finally gave in, & made a whirlwind early-morning trip, before meeting a friend for a dim sum lunch. Fortunately, my mid-week, early-morning trip yielded a very uncrowded park, with no memorable waits for any of the rides I chose. I had a great time!

Speaking of tourist zones, look at this cool 3-D card my pen pal in Tokyo, Japan sent to me when she visited Tokyo Tower! The fact that they had a special mailbox & postmark tells me that Japan is very much more of a postcard-writing-and-treasuring culture than is the U.S. Now I did, on a recent road trip, see a general store in a little community that had its own postcards, which it would mail for you for free, should you fill one out to someone & drop it in their basket. I didn’t take advantage of the offer, as I don’t carry an address book on me. Guess I could have looked up addresses on my phone email app–but I don’t know how many Gs I was getting in that remote area!

The soup comes via a Postcrossing Forum food tag from a sender in Yokohama, Japan, who tells me about the photo on her card:

“This picture of Japanese local cuisine ‘Sanpei-jiru.’ It’s Japanese sake less soup with chopped salmon and vegetables. It’s very good.”

A flying whale from Albany, New York, thanks for a Postcrossing Forum “marine life & sea creature” tag. I see I made a note on the card quoting a line from this Postcrosser’s profile: “I love words.” Now, why did I want to remember that? Oh, I see now: the card was mostly blank space on the back, with the only message being “hope you like this card! I thought it was pretty cool. :)”

So, that happened.

The rug-looking card seems to be a piece of cardboard covered in gift wrap. I’d have guessed contact paper, but this thing arrived in my mailbox flapping apart, attached only at one end. This has been a bit of a theme recently. This one came to me from Blitar, Indonesia, thanks to Postcrossing. The sender tells me I am her first match–she just joined the night before! She also wrote:

“I am 23 years old, living in a small city in East Java province, called Blitar. I love reading too! My favourite is about self development, business/marketing and also recipe book because I’m a chef… I am a food consultant here, my clients are spread in Palembang, Jakarta, Surabaya, etc… so I live nomaden sometimes… Hahaha. I love traveling too! My fave Asia destinations are Thailand and Hong Kong! The food is superb! I hope someday I can go to USA!!! That’s my dream destination.”

Finally, there’s the St. Petersburg card, another Postcrossing draw, this time from a 16-year-old girl in Checkhov, Russia, who wrote that she’d just returned from Camp Artek, where she was in the sea squad, and had a great time learning knots, semaphore, and much more.

Let’s start with Good Ol’ Snoopy Brown. I’ve mentioned many times in this space the lack of Snoopy/Peanuts cards here in the U.S. Despite being the birthplace of the comic strip, and although Peanuts greeting cards seem to be sold absolutely everywhere (even in supermarkets), the postcards are just not found unless you go to the source: the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa.

That being the case, I was thrilled to find a book of 1970’s-era Snoopy postcards on sale online!

Several have already been dispatched, including to Peanuts-loving pen-pals of mine in Hawaii, Tokyo, & England (I know I didn’t write that trio out as an equal set, yes). Those cards (and one to Taoyuan, Taiwan, for a Postcrossing Forum tag) went out as postcards should, with a note & a stamp on the back, & dropped into a mailbox. The next one here went out to a Postcrossing Forum regular in Finland who says that she gives Snoopy postcards to a friend, so she’d like hers in an envelope. Okay, fine–I made an envelope:

She also likes to collect stamps, so since I was already throwing stuff into an envelope, I added some stamps from my incoming mail.

The foggy view of Golden Gate Bridge was chosen by someone in Berlin, Germany, in a Postcrossing Forum “show the card you offer” tag. I’m glad I had something she liked.

To Berlin & St. Petersburg

Okay, let’s get into the Russia hack scandal story I’ve just made up (or unearthed inadvertently, who knows). I have fallen way behind on “official” cards traveling out via Postcrossing Forum & Postcard United: between the two sites, I had only 1 card traveling (I think I can have around 30 at this point if I chose to). Yes, I’m sending a lot of cards out, but it’s mainly via Postcrossing Forum, which offers so many different options that I’ve just found it the more fun way to go. The problem I have with the main focus of the two sites is that Postcrossing Forum seems to send me constantly to just the same 3-4 countries, and Postcard United’s algorithm is so rough that there are repeat encounters with the same people, and I’m being paired within my own country.

Anyhow, I decided to send some cards out again via the two sites, so started asking to be assigned addresses:

Click 1–Postcrossing: Saint Petersburg, RUSSIA. Of course. Decided to try my luck next at the other site.

Click 2–Postcard United: Moscow, RUSSIA. Why, I oughta…

Click 3–Postcard United: Krasnodar, RUSSIA. What?!? I claim shenanigans. I’m moving back to the other site.

Click 4–Postcrossing: Alkmaar, Netherlands. Fine. I then quit while I was ahead. We’ll see when I click on those “send a postcard” buttons again. This is supposed to be relaxing.

A sweetened pickle to the Netherlands, and the rest to Russia.

Moving on from the Eastern European drama… the pair of cards pictured next went off to China, in Postcrossing Forum tags. The aerial view of Hearst Castle (another card I replenished during my recent postcard-gathering road trip) is headed toward a food safety major in Beijing, who expressed his wishes for anything local to the sender: “local buildings…anything local is welcome!” If by local, he meant anything in the same state, this place 3 hours or so away from me is local!

The pancakes, which I received recently from a Postcard Uniter, go to Heifei, Anhui, China, in a food postcard trade. The recipient is a chemistry student who says he loves travel, and receiving food postcards.

Finally, this multi-zoned California map card (part of my recent haul) went off to Hong Kong, to someone hoping for map cards. I told her that within just a couple of months, I will have traveled to every segment on the left sided of the card within this calendar year. I do love coastal trips!

Now a look at stamps, stickers, washi tape, & stuff–do you have any favorites down here? Behold the new USPS stamp release, Delicioso, which “celebrates the influence of Central and South American, Mexican, and Caribbean foods and flavors on American cuisine.” And I always love the shorebird & sea shell postcard stamp sets.

I really enjoyed this collage made by a swap-botter someplace in California. She was pretty proud of her Inuyasha art–but was mortified when I told her that it had come apart in my mailbox.

Here you can see the front & the back of the card: the insides, which only she was supposed to see. We seem to have some sort of tablet package, and a calendar page.

She wanted to make me a new collage, but there was really no need for that, as the collage itself was fully intact, and the card had miraculously waited until it reached me to fall apart. I did recommend to her that Mod Podge may be good as collage lacquer–but it’s no glue.

I think the sender of this next card may have used the same product. This was supposed to be a Postcrossing Forum food package tag. It’s from Graz, Styria, Austria.

Now, I love how she crammed as much writing as she could onto the card, even including a recipe. But flip it over to see the food package, and all you see are shiny streaks:

Yes, I let her know. She deserves to know. According to Postcrossing, she’s been registered for 8+ years. She’s sent fewer than 10 cards, I think, officially, so I assume she’s mostly been on the forum, as I have been lately. Don’t know how many cards she’s been making herself, but she deserves to know that this product is a danger. That gloss: do you think she used Chapstick?

UPDATE: I heard back from this sender, and she says she used a glue stick.

Have you had any issues like these? Even glue sticks concern me, sometimes. It’s worth at least putting a dot of 70 of tacky glue along the corners or edges.